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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Hermes
is the son of Zeus. He is the messenger. He wears winged sandals, a winged hat,
and a magic wand. He is the fastest of the gods. He is the god of thieves and
he is the god of commerce. Even when he steals, he does it so gracefully. He is
the guide for the dead to go to the underworld. He
invented, the pipes, the musical scale, astronomy, weights and measures,
boxing, gymnastics and the care of olive trees (*).

Hermes most recently invented the digital
technology. Internet and smart phones are the new messengers. They wear winged
cases and lids so they can uplift information over iClouds. They are the god of
commerce. Even when they steal, they do it so gracefully that we do not even
realize. We “check-in” to give Mr.
Facebook our geospatial location. Then, our smartphones tell us the closest
café we can spend our dollars. You thought 3G was fast, well try 4G. It is the
fastest. It makes music for fun: “Share with friends,” “Listen on-the-go.”
Digital technology reinvented everything we thought we liked. We like them even
better now! They are the guide to go to the Underworld. Black markets are now
based around mobile phones (Wired, December-2011).Blackberries and iPhones transformed New York’s
sex trade (Wired, January-2011). Zeus bless Hermes. He got really smart this time.

Limitations
to Social Networking: Human Brain

Social scientists have been investigating the reason
behind the wide dispersion of social networks. Katz (2007) pointed out that
digital technology is trendy and convenient. Crawford explained the phenomenon
in terms of ‘satisfying the need for reciprocal communication,’ which, by the
way, can also occur through listening, according to Crawford. Based on an
analysis on Foursquare, Lindqvist, Cranshaw & Wiese (2011) concluded that it is simply
the excitement of presentation of self and coordinating with friends. The question
is, when we have all these digital tools to satisfy our need for socialization,
where do we stop? How many friends are enough? The answer is between 100 and 200. According
to Bruno Goncalves, from Indiana University,
our brains have a “saturation point,” which is the number ofpeople can tweeters maintain contact
with before they get overwhelmed. The studyconducted on Twitter users illustrated
that when information starts flooding from our social circles, we only tend to
focus on the ones we have strong ties with. So, just because we can increase
our social ties does not necessarily mean we can socialize more. It is not enough to have a digital presence, but now one
has to compete for attention.

(Courtesy photo by Goncalves, Perra, Vespignani, 2011) "The average weight of each outward connection gradually increases until it reaches a maximum near 150–200 contacts, signaling that a maximum level of social activity has been reached."

Privacy

Lindqvist, Cranshaw & Wiese (2011) brought up the
public concern about privacy in their study. Privacy, arguably, has always been
one of the biggest drawbacks of technology. Even though the society vocalizes this concern from time to time, the problem simply has been escalating over the years. It
was only 2001, when Wired magazine ran the headline:the Surveillance Society. Back then it was just regular phones, traffic
cameras, EZ cards, and Bluetooth that raised concern. At the time, the society
was scared of government ‘knowing too much.’ We were trading privacy for
security. We are now trading privacy for entertainment using more sophisticated
tools. It is also noteworthy
how the biggest threat Wired could foresee for our privacy, when the article was written, was ‘nano-cameras.’ Fast-forwarding
a decade, most of us probably wish nano-cameras were the problem.

“Orwell's greatest
error, says Peter Huber, author ofOrwell's Revenge,was his view that [only] the government had a monopoly
on surveillance technologies.” (Wired, 9/12).